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Reserve Your Seat TodayNemont Telephone Cooperative, Inc. was organized in 1950 by people in rural areas wanting telephone service. Today, its services include cellular, local, long-distance, internet, and cable TV. Nemont has been recognized in the national media for its deployment of broadband technology in rural areas.
Zac Ohlson is a Central Office Technician for Nemont Telephone. He recently attended Factory Training and shared his thoughts about how their DPS gear is working and his experience in Factory Training.
"The NetGuardians we use have been rock-solid. We get our alarm and instantly we know there's a problem."
Nemont first installed DPS monitoring gear in 2006. Another company, which monitored their network after hours, used a T/Mon master station and NetGuardians to monitor critical alarms and transports. Nemont looked to this company, Vision Net, for guidance and chose to deploy DPS technology when upgrading its monitoring system.
Since they needed network visibility, Nemont has been using a T/Mon master station and NetGuardian RTUs to achieve this goal. "The NetGuardians we use have been rock-solid," Ohlson said. "We get our alarm and instantly we know there's a problem."
On several occasions, their alarm monitoring equipment has alerted Nemont of a problem before it caused major damage. "The gear has helped us prevent things like weekend-long outages," he said.
With their NetGuardians and T/Mon, Ohlson and the other technicians can quickly respond to problems, which helps prevent prolonged network downtime. His assessment of Nemont's T/Mon matches Allison Wang, a Nemont employee who previously attended Factory Training. "T/Mon is so much better than the system we had before," she said. "It saves time just having it."
T/Mon allows Nemont to be proactive about monitoring all of the critical conditions, like T1 transport, across their entire network. Because of this forward-thinking approach, their customers enjoy reliable service.
Between their own T/Mon Master and VisionNet's, Nemont is able to monitor alarms from their NetGuardian 832A G5 RTUs and other monitored equipment.
"My goal was to come to Factory Training and learn more about the T/Mon and the NetGuardian. On Day 1, my knowledge went 10-fold over what I knew previously."
He had some basic experience using the DPS gear, but Ohlson knew there was so much more for him to learn. In April 2012, he came to DPS Headquarters in Fresno, California, United States to attend Factory Training.
He quickly saw the value in Factory Training. "My prior knowledge was to log in and just silence nuisance alarms, "he said, "and maybe look at alarms in other areas." After only one day of training, he started to really learn how he could use his DPS gear to better monitor critical conditions across Nemont's network. "My goal was to come to Factory Training and learn more about the T/Mon and the NetGuardian, and on Day 1, my knowledge went 10-fold over what I knew."
Looking towards the future, Ohlson also sees how training is going to make his life easier. "Right now, we don't do much with SNMP, but soon we're going with a different switch, and it uses SNMP," he told us. "Understanding how T/Mon processes SNMP traps is going to make my life phenomenally easier."
